Category : guitar

A bunch of notes for the blues 1

There are four different scales you can use to solo on the blues.

 

• Minor pentatonic
• Major pentatonic
• Dorian
• Blues scale

 

A major pentatonic

You know the A minor pentatonic. Here’s the A major pentatonic scale.

 

 

Remember: take the key of the song and use that as the starting note on the sixth string. Here’s a blues in A…

 

…and here’s a backing track.

 

 

Notice how the bottom staff of the video progression is different than the progression above it. Both are commonly used.

 

Get comfortable with the A major pentatonic scale by playing it with the progression. Like you did with the A minor pentatonic scale, write down stuff you like.

 

 Roman numerals

You’re probably wondering about the symbols above some of the chords in the blues progression – I7, IV7, V7.

 

Here’s the deal with that.

 

Each chord in a key is assigned a roman numeral. There are different ways of doing this. For the blues, every chord gets an upper case roman numeral (i.e. I), not a lower case roman numeral (i.e. i)

 

(I’ve addressed roman numerals that deal with major and minor chords here.

http://davewallmusic.com/how-to-write-chord-progressions-a-pro-would-love-part-8-chord-progresson-patterns/)

 

 

The first chord gets a I; the second chord gets a II, etc.

 

 

A            B           C#           D           E            F#            G#

I            II            III            IV            V            VI            VII

 

7th chords

If the chords are 7^th chords, we put a 7 after each roman numeral.

 

 

A7            B7           C#7          D7            E7            F#7            G#7

I7            II7            III7            IV7            V7            VI7            VII7

 

 

In a conventional 12-bar blues like the one we’re talking about here, only the I7, IV7, and V7 are used. That’s how you get A7, D7, and E7 for a blues in A.

 

This helps if you want to use the I, IV, and V chords in another key. The key of C, for instance.

 

 

C7            D7            E7              F7             G7             A7             B7

I7            II7            III7            IV7            V7            VI7            VII7

 

 

So the chords for a blues in C would be C7, F7, and G7. And the scales you could use would be C minor pentatonic or C major pentatonic.

 

To be perfectly clear, use C7 instead of A7 in the progression above. Then use F7 instead of D7. And use G7 instead of E7.

 

We’ll look at the dorian mode and the blues scale in the next post.

 

 

Improvisation if you’ve never done it

Improvisation is like conversation. We have a general idea of what we want to say, but nobody thinks about what words they’re going to use before they say them. When we improvise on an instrument, we don’t know exactly what notes we’re going to play before we play them.

But if you’ve never improvised before, how do you start? How do you know what notes to play?

Improvising on a chord progression

First, you need a scale. Then you need to know that that scale will sound good on a given chord progression. We make it sound good by using it in the key that the chord progression is in.

This is easy if you know what key the song is in. If it’s in A minor, you use the A minor pentatonic scale. Simply start the scale on A on the sixth string. Here’s the scale again. Just in case…

If the song is in C minor, start the scale on C on the sixth string. In B minor, start on B, etc.

Ninety percent of the time, the first chord of the song will tell you the key.  You can figure our what the first chord is by listening to the recording. This can be difficult. If it is, search “song-name chords” online.

Make a progression

Here are the chords in the key of C major:

Cmaj            Dmin            Emin            Fmaj            Gmaj            Amin            Bdim

To get the chords in the key of A minor, simply start the sequence on the A minor chord:

Amin            Bdim            Cmaj            Dmin            Emin            Fmaj            Gmaj

In A minor, you can use E major instead of E minor, and G# diminished instead of G major.

Make a three-chord progression in the key of A minor. Choose any three chords and organize them into an 8-bar progression. Now loop the progression.

If you don’t have something to loop your progression with, download the free recording platform Audacity. It’s a great idea to learn how to use software like this, if you don’t already know how. Hours of fun.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

Or you could use a jam track:

Using jam tracks online is a nice way of practicing scales in different styles. Check out the youtube page for other videos in A minor.

Improvise

All you need to do for now is play the A minor pentatonic scale over whatever progression you’re using. Don’t worry about being a genius. Just play the scale. Make sure you go slow enough that you aren’t making mistakes. You’ll hear stuff you like as you play. Repeat that stuff.

I’ll have concrete ideas for improvising in later posts. For now, just get comfortable playing the scale. When you play something you like, find a way to remember it. Write it down, record it…

Soloing

This blog is intended to relate playing the guitar to composition, and vice versa. Learning to solo can lead to learning scales and trying to play them as fast as possible. That doesn’t apply here.

But learning about creating riffs and melodies does. Scales are good for this.

(It doesn’t mean that you can’t use what I say here to play solos. It’s just not my focus.)

Technique

Learning tapping, sweeping, and legato techniques for their own sake is fine. Learning one of these techniques, and having it inspire some writing is better. That seems more interesting to me than simply learning technique so you can play a more impressive solo. I’ll look at these techniques in later posts for their compositional value.

First steps

The first thing you need is a scale. The minor pentatonic is probably the most common scale in popular music. Here are two ways of looking at the A minor pentatonic scale:

Notes…

 

…and a diagram. The numbers indicate what fingers to use.

 

 

So what do you do with this?

Try this. Play a recording of a song you like. Get your guitar and play along with it using the A minor pentatonic scale. If you’re lucky, the scale will be in the same key as the song and it will sound fine. But you’ll probably have to move the scale shape to different spots on the neck until it sounds good.

This just means that you start the scale on a different fret than the 5th fret. By the time the song ends, you’ll most likely have found the right scale. If not, start the song from the beginning and keep going. Be patient.

Phrasing

Once you have the right scale, start the song again. Play only when the singer is singing. This gives you a feel for something called phrasing.

Phrasing is a personal way of playing a series of notes. It’s called phrasing because it’s related to the phrase lengths we use when we speak. When we play like we speak, it sounds and feels natural.

Playing like you speak

Playing like you speak means to play phrases that are no longer than the length of your breath. It means to pause like you would at the end of a sentence. It means not playing way too many notes. Playing along with the singer gives you a sense of the natural length for a single phrase.

Think of the solo as a story. Stories are built from sentences and phrases. A good story doesn’t have run-on sentences because they annoy people. So keep your phrases concise. Don’t play anything longer than a natural sentence length.

Breathing

Take a breath. Now breathe out while playing the minor pentatonic scale. That’s a good measure for how long a phrase should be. This is a rule of thumb, not a hard and fast rule. Some phrases might be a bit longer, some a bit shorter.

As you do this work, be aware of the compositional implications. Getting a feel for optimum phrase-lengths in a solo transfers to writing good melody. Focusing on scales as a tool for writing melody transfers to playing good solos. Think compositionally and your playing will be better.

Scale-tone triads 3

Playing with another guitar player can get messy if you’re both playing the same thing. Sometimes it’s ok. If not, then scale-tone triads are a nice tool for providing some variety.

I gave you some ideas in the last post. Here’s a bit more detail. This will mean more to you if you’ve done some experimenting  beforehand.

 

Arpeggios

When you play notes in a chord individually as single notes, you have an arpeggio.

Here are the G major scale-tone triads as arpeggios.

 

 

Play through this a few times to get comfortable with it. Then move on to using it in a progression.

 

 Looping

Loop the following progression.

Now play any G major scale-tone triad arpeggio while the loop plays. Some will sound more dissonant than others. Find the ones that you like.

Keep the loop playing and go through the entire sequence of scale-tone arpeggios. Then try jumping randomly from arpeggio to arpeggio.

Be more specific and go from the G major arpeggio to the E minor arpeggio and back. Now go from the G major arpeggio to the B minor arpeggio. Choose any two arpeggios and use only those for the entire progression. Change the rhythm. Play only two notes from each arpeggio.

 

Song parts

The more simple you are about what you play, the more it will sound like a part that you wrote for the song.

Now invent a few progressions using chords in the key of G major. Loop those and go through the process above. Try to pay attention to the sounds that you like and make note of them in your notebook. These will wind up making it into your songs as unique song parts. This is how you develop a personal voice. This is how you give yourself choice beyond playing the same thing as the other guy.

 

Scale-tone triads 2

 

Here’s the G major triad shape from the last post.

 

 

 

This chord shape can be used at 3 fret locations in the G major scale that I showed you in the last post: the 3^rd fret (G major triad), the  8^th  fret (C major triad), and the 10^th fret (D major triad).

 

Minor shape

The following chord is the shape for the scale-tone minor triad.  Since it’s at the 5^th fret, it’s the A minor triad (remember that with these shapes, we name the triad using the note-name on the high E string – 5^th fret, high E string is an A).

 

 

 

In G major, this shape is used at the 5^th fret (A minor triad), the 7^th fret (B minor triad), and the 12^th fret (E minor triad).

 

Chord sequence

So the sequence of the first six scale-tone triads is:

 

G major (3^rd fret), A minor (5^th fret), B minor (7^th fret), C major (8^th fret), D major (10^th fret), and E minor (12^th fret). Looking at the scale below, try to visualize the major and minor shapes at the correct frets.

 

 

The diminished triad

The last chord isn’t used that much. It’s called the diminished chord. It’s the final chord of the scale-tone series, and it’s placed at the 14^th fret. Finding a way to use it in your songs will give them a different flavor.

 

 

 

Things to do

There are a few standard ways to play with these:

• as a scale, going sequentially from G major to E minor and back.
• moving randomly from chord to chord.
• playing just two of the notes (any two) simultaneously while moving between chords.
• playing each note in each chord individually before moving to another chord

 

Record a jam track using open-string chords in the key of G. Use the ideas I just mentioned to play along with it. Depending on how you do this, it can sound like a solo, or as a background part for a song.

 

 

 

 

 

Scale-tone triads 1

 

The next three posts are devoted to scale-tone triads. This post gives you the idea. The last two will apply it.

 

Chord-building

I’ve talked about building a chord on the first note of the scale in previous posts.

http://davewallmusic.com/making-your-own-chords/ and   http://davewallmusic.com/making-chords-in-every-key/

 

So what about building chords on the other notes of the scale? What chords are built on those?

 

Before I get to that, some review is in order.

 

Triads

I’ve made the point elsewhere that a triad is a three-note chord. Open string chords are triads that have more than three-notes (some of the three notes are doubled). We’re going to reduce those open string triads to three notes.  For example, the G major open string triad looks like this.

And it looks like this on the staff. There are three Gs, 2 Bs and 1 D.

 

 

This can be reduced to this. There is one G, one B, and one D.

 

Which looks like this on the fretboard.

 

 

 

This is a scale-tone triad built on the first note of the G major scale (the G – 3^rd fret, high E string). For each note of the scale, there is an individual triad. Some have this shape. Others have a different shape.

 

(At this point, you may be saying, “The open-string chord sounds a lot better. Why learn this other one?” Stick with me. It’ll be worth it).

 

Where are they?

To get the location of the triads built on the other notes of the scale, we need to know where those other notes are. To do this, we play the G major scale on the E string starting on the third fret. Here’s what that looks like.

 

 

Play that a few times to get to know where all the notes are. Do it using only your index finger. Imagine that each time you play one of those notes, you’re playing a triad.

 

In the next post, you’ll play the actual triads as a sequence from the first note of the scale to the last.